Chapter 1: A New Beginning
I had just bought a small house at the far edge of Maple Creek—a quiet, forgotten suburb nestled along the northern fringe of Portland. The address was simple: 101, Building J.
It was everything the city wasn't.
No honking horns. No subway screech. No chaos. Just crickets, breeze, and silence so thick it seemed to press in from all sides.
The air smelled like pine and earth, and in summer, the yard was filled with bugs I couldn't name—some buzzing, some crawling, and yes, plenty of mosquitoes. I loved them. In some twisted way, I loved them like I loved women: wild, unpredictable, alive.
There weren't many people in the neighborhood. Occasionally, I'd see someone walking a dog or a mother guiding a toddler with chubby, uncertain steps. The paths were paved with clean slate, flanked by neat rows of trimmed grass and flower beds that looked like they belonged in a catalog.
At the center of the community was a man-made pond with a stone fountain. The water never stopped—day or night it whispered, hissed, and sometimes roared like a secret too loud to ignore.
The sky here was an impossible blue. I often sat in my small backyard staring at it for hours. The fence was wooden and waist-high, painted white but slowly peeling, just like in those movies where nothing bad happens until it does.
One time, a grasshopper landed on my foot. Its leg was broken. I gently picked it up and placed it in the grass outside the fence. As I did, two birds—larger than sparrows, almost like feral chickens—perched on the railing and clucked. Mocking, maybe. Watching, definitely.
No one knew I lived here. I hadn't told a soul. Not even my parents. No one had my phone number, and I hadn't given it to the building manager. I wanted isolation. Not loneliness, exactly—just... insulation. A cocoon between me and the world.
I didn't install any metal security bars on the windows. That felt like something out of a prison drama—not a fairy tale. Besides, I liked the idea that every window could be an escape.
In the daytime, the neighborhood was so quiet it felt post-apocalyptic. But at night, the silence cracked. Crickets screamed like tiny chainsaws. And sometimes, just sometimes, I thought I heard something more.
The street lamps were designed like old lanterns, soft-glowing, almost reverent. When they turned on, the plants and trees nearby seemed to deepen in color, as if darkness itself respected the light but never really left.
I thought I had found peace here. But peace, I would learn, is just the first stage of something else.
Something watching.
Something waiting.